Satirizing the Boston Port Act after the Boston Tea Party

Johann Martin Will after Philip Dawe, The Bostonians in Distress. Mezzotint Engraved Print. Augsburg, Germany: Johann Martin Will, ca. 1774 to early 1780s. First state. 1 p., 9 3/4 x 14? in., framed to 13 x 17 1/4 in. This political cartoon illustrates the predicament of the Bostonians, whose port the British government had closed in June 1774 in response to the Boston Tea Party. The intended message of the print Bostonians in Distress is ambiguous. The town of Boston is represented as caged and dangling from a dead limb of the Liberty Tree. The imprisoned Bostonians are being fed fish from baskets labeled "To - / from the Committee of -," a reflection of the aid provided by sympathizers in other towns and colonies. In return, the Bostonians offer a sheaf of paper labeled "Promises." A minister among the Boston prisoners holds a sheet of paper with a quotation from Psalm 107:13, "They cried unto the Lord in their Troubl & he saved them out of their Distress." The Liberty Tree is surrounded by British soldiers and cannon, and some of the soldiers are leading away sheep donated to the Bostonians by other colonies. The British Navy that enforced the port closure appears as ships of the line in the distance.Although few British politicians or members of the public approved of the destruction of property in the Boston Tea Party or the subsequent tarring and feathering of customs officer John Malcom in January 1774, plenty opposed the punitive nature of the Intolerable Acts and worried that the curtailment of the "natural and constitutional liberties" of the British citizens in Massachusetts might soon be turned against residents of the British Isles.The Boston Port Bill and other Intolerable Acts spurred the first meeting of the Continental Congress in the autumn of 1774.This version was produced by German engraver and publisher Johann Martin Will of Augsburg, an independent city in Bavaria, after Philip Dawe's engraving, printed by R. Sayer and J. Bennett of London. Will also produced a series of prints of the major personages of the American Revolution.…